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RELATED: Mamoru Hosoda's Belle Releases First English Trailer, Dub Cast While Suzu struggles with expressing herself in person, in the virtual online world of U, she adopts the persona of Belle, a confident and commanding performer who is famous worldwide. The movie centers on Suzu Naito, a teenage girl in a rural Japanese town who dreams of becoming a famous singer, but is held back by her shyness and trauma over her mother's death. Hosoda began his career in the 1990s at Toei Animation, where he worked on the Digimon and One Piece franchises.īelle sees Hosoda revisiting many of the technology-focused themes he explored in Digimon and Summer Wars. Hosoda has been frequently compared to Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki, and has directed a number of similarly critically lauded animated movies, including 2006's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and 2009's Summer Wars. The movie is the latest work by Hosoda, whose previous film, 2018's Mirai, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film. Belle made its international premiere in the fall of 2021 at the Cannes Film Festival, where the movie received a 14 minute standing ovation.
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